


Pieces

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Mirrormask (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-22
Updated: 2008-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena's thoughts about not-Valentine in the circus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alianora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/gifts).



It couldn't have been simply a dream. Dreams don't carry the vividness of the journey through the lands of Light and Dark and the Borderlands. Dreams don't introduce you to people that you haven't yet met. Dreams don't change you, no matter what Dickens may write in his stories. That was just a story, and this is real, and I know that it was more than just a dream I had while Mum was in the hospital.

It was real, but this man here isn't Valentine. Not _my_ Valentine, not really. Oh, he looks like Valentine, or what he would look like if his face were flesh and not a mask. He sounds like Valentine, that cadence to his voice that still haunts my dreams. He doesn't call himself a very important man, and I miss that. Important men don't run away to join the circus, and important men don't come hat in hand willing to do just about anything in order to join said circus. He wants me to teach him to juggle, to act in the circus the way we do, to laugh without using his eyes the way I do.

He's not Valentine. Valentine already knows those things.

But he's deft with his words when Mum asks after him, and he's light on his toes with the dancing routines. Dad laughs and thinks it's grand that a dancer has joined us, that it would make it easier on him to learn the timing in the routines. He winks and smiles at me when he ought not to, and he whistles a jaunty tune when no one is listening. He tilts his head to the side when he thinks, and he sometimes uses an odd phrase or two that he says he picked up in university. A learned man, my father says, and seems inordinately pleased at times when I can't figure out why. He loves the library and knows it inside out. He loves books, calls them brave little souls able to tutor the darkest of minds, and I sometimes feel as though he could out-riddle a sphinx.

In those ways, he's still my Valentine. If Valentine was ever mine.

But no, I can say that Valentine was mine. He came back for me, he brought me back to myself. He saved the lands in the end, he gave me the mirrormask and it all fell back into place. He didn't leave me stuck in a jar alone for all eternity while he went away with his blood rubies.

I juggle with him, and it's not the same. And it's the same. And I flit back and forth between the memory of the thing and the ghost of what was simply a dream-yet-not-a-dream, and I know I look at him funny. I'm caught in this, the feeling of strangeness and recognition. I know him in some ways, and he's a complete stranger in others. I find myself telling him about that awful time Mum was in the hospital, when no one knew what was wrong with her and we thought the circus was over. All of us, the sparkle and shine gone, the listlessness of normalcy taking over and leaving us with the ruin of our lives. He nodded sagely then, and said it's difficult to deal with tragedy, to live without an ivory tower.

I wanted to cry then, and he couldn't tell why. I couldn't tell him why, either. How can I tell him something I don't even know myself?

It isn't fair, the loss I feel sometimes. It's not fair to him, because he's not Valentine. It's not fair to who he is or who he could be, the man he's becoming in the circus. It's not fair and I know I shouldn't do it, but I compare him to my Valentine all the time. He wears a mask in his act, my own doing, and I can feel my heart breaking to pieces. I've drawn him a thousand times over - mask, no mask, eyes, no eyes, mouth, no mouth - and I know I'm not being fair to him even as I do it. I can't help it. I want my Valentine, _my_ Valentine. We never had a chance, he and I, and it's lost forever now. The Dreaming has swallowed him up, and I can't get him back again. I lost whatever could have been, whatever physicality that our quest denied us. I didn't think of it at the time, not really, but I wonder what his lips would have felt like. I wonder if he would have been polite or grabby (I think grabby) and I wonder if he would have been as generous to me as he always seemed to be. I wonder if he would throw his arms around me, hold me close and tell me again of those fantastical tales that he was full to the brim with. I wonder if he would let the odd feelings fade, or would he make them flower and bloom. I wonder if he could make my blood sing a thousand tunes at once before crashing down and breaking my heart to pieces as I'm already doing to myself.

I can't explain this to anyone. It doesn't make sense. How can you love someone that doesn't exist? How can you do this to someone who's real?

He takes my hand, this man who looks like Valentine but isn't, and I feel his skin rub against mine. I feel the shiver run through me, and I know what he's thinking when he looks at me. I know he's real, I know there are feelings involved. Mine are all convoluted, twisted and dirty and tainted by a dream. He doesn't know about it, doesn't think to ask why I seem strange around him, why my kisses are hesitant and unsure. He thinks it's because I'm young, because it's awkward how we first met, because we don't have much time alone together without Pongo or Mum or Dad crashing in.

But I know it's because he's Valentine. And he's also not-Valentine, and that breaks me to pieces.

 

End.


End file.
